Money Flows

Troy Camplin's post on "The Constructal Law" was fascinating.  I have never heard of the term, but the post was about branching patterns of rivers and chaos theory and evolution and economics were all about how things flow.  I think it's worth further exploration. This was my initial response:

My favorite imagery from reading Adam Smith is his recurrent use of flowing water. Whenever governments try to steer industry away from its natural channel, their purposes are thwarted by entrepreneurs in such a way that everyone is generally worse off than if the government had not acted at all. Water seeks its own level, and capital seeks profit opportunities. The power of water carves canyons and sculpts seashores. Governments try to dam the power of markets and command the tide not to rise, but price controls create scarcity instead of prosperity, and resulting black markets do not have the safeguards of legal property rights. 
My pet example is "campaign finance reform". The Hoover Dam is a remarkable feat of engineering. It was made from 4 million cubic yards of concrete and killed dozens of people during construction, not to mention the continuing environmental costs, but at least we can say that it does what we intended it to do: eliminate flooding, create electricity, and provide water for irrigation. On the other hand, the Colorado River that carved the Grand Canyon is not going to be stopped for long by whatever concrete we can throw at it. Every year the water seeps a little bit farther and faster through the rocks around the dam. In geologic time, the awesome Hoover Dam will be gone in an eye-blink. Compare this to campaign finance reform. Person A has influence to sell, person B wishes to buy. This is determined to be undesirable so we dam the transaction. Person A may not take person B's money, but he still has influence to sell and B still wishes to buy. Introduce the middleman. The middleman may take the form of soft money, 527's, PAC's, or hiring A's useless son for a sinecure; but the money will move from B to A because even the the most draconian legislation is much more pervious to individual relationships than concrete is to water. Money flows.

The Voice of the People - On behalf of the one

Dr. Tim Nerenz posted a great article explaining why all citizens should tell the government to back off from regulating church teachings and practice.  It is a well-done piece, but perhaps he didn’t go far enough.  This debate over forcing employers to cover contraceptives is a matter not only of religion, but also of conscience.  We are quibbling over whether the government can force someone to pay for contraceptives, but the same arguments could be applied to paying taxes to support what some label as an immoral war, or to indoctrinate our neighbor’s children in state institutions, or even to enforce the temperature at which food is served.  The only difference here is that Obama is treading on the toes of an organized religion and not an unaffiliated mass of individuals.  I would argue that this must be a violation of the first amendment.  If “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”, then why does the violation of the tenants of the Catholic church carry more weight than the violation of the conscience of any American?  The Catholic church serves a large number of Americans so it seems ridiculous that Obama would seemingly provoke them deliberately, but would it be any better if it were only one?  The whole issue throws into sharp focus how our political dialogue has wandered away from the concept of liberty.  Perhaps Dr. Tim stopped short because he feared that if everyone saw the inconsistencies in our system we would end up with an uprising.  I do NOT in any way support an uprising.  I’m not even sure I support Thoreau’s conscientious objection to paying taxes that support an immoral regime.   We have mechanisms in place to democratically remove the usurpers of our liberty.  If we do not do so, we deserve what we get.

Democracy is a very dangerous thing.  Plato hated democracy because he saw its logical conclusion first hand.  Socrates was condemned to death because he was a constant source of annoyance.  Annoy enough people—or, today, have a large enough bank account—and a democracy is sure to take everything you have:  property, liberty, life.  Athens was the “cradle of democracy” which was a pejorative term until well after the founding of America, because with the coming of democracy:

“From this time the People became altogether idle and unnactive; they received the same pay for sitting at home and doing nothing but attending the publick Diversions as they did for serving their country abroad, and the former was without question the easiest duty.—Military Glory had then no weight; the orators ruled the People coaxing them with new schemes of additional wealth and often overruled the most experienced commanders, turning them, continuing them or changing them as they thought fit. Levies were then seldom voted and where they were, as seldom made. The Athenians from being the most enterprising people in Greece were now become the most idle and unnactive.”

Contrast this with the current perception of democracy.  There currently popular notion seems to be that the will of the people sanctifies any action.  Here we read “Now it is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law—to do your business by the voice of the people.” 

We’ve all heard examples of mob rule, right?  Not pretty.

To continue the quote: “And if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you; yea, then is the time he will visit you with great destruction even as he has hitherto visited this land.”

Ouch.

So, the point here isn’t that democracy is good, it is just that the mistakes and prejudices of a thousand people are more likely to cancel each other out, at least compared to a dictator who merely argues his selfishness against his own conscience.

The brilliance of our “founding fathers” was that while they allowed a sort of a democracy where the will of the people had the power to change things, either to eliminate tyranny and oppression (let’s list Constitutional Amendments 13, 15, 19, and 21) or to increase it (16 and 18? the federal reserve system?), they inserted brakes in the system so that we did not destroy ourselves too quickly.  Because we have a republic, the voice of the people does not automatically translate into policy—but it does steer the direction our country is headed in.  Are we headed towards liberty or slavery?

How do we change it?  It’s not by lobbying or protesting or suing the government, at least not directly.  We change the course our country is charting by changing the hearts and minds of her people.  Teach, write, proclaim, sing, and celebrate liberty, righteousness, and TRUTH.  Stand up for rights of others, even if you don’t agree with them, by speaking out.  BE the voice of the people, and speak for the rights of the ONE.

Does it matter who gets elected?  A little.  But we get the policies we deserve.

The Key to Happyness - Life sucks. Grow up.

Last night I watched "The Pursuit of Happyness".  It was an adorable movie about dedication and perseverance to a dream, overcoming the odds to become successful.  This dad loses everything and ends up sleeping in a bathroom in a subway station with his five-year-old boy, but they struggle through and end up multi-millionaires. 

The story is cute and inspiring, but what really stuck with me about this movie was the mother’s story.  She hates her life.  She is tired of struggling, wondering if they can catch up on the back rent and the IRS payments, working double shifts and trying to be a wife and mother.  I can really feel for her frustration, but what I don’t understand is what happens next. 

She quits.

Quits.

He is late getting home and when he calls from a payphone to let her know, she informs him that she won’t be there when he gets back.  She is just not happy anymore.  He comes home to an empty house. 

So, my question is:  How does that make things better?  The debts don’t disappear, the bills don’t disappear, communication breaks down, coordinating childcare becomes harder, and now – since you were so stressed out about not being able to afford the rent – you get to pay another rent.

She moves to New York because her sister’s boyfriend might have a job for her and we don’t see her the rest of the movie.

How can she walk away from family: her five year old son and a loving husband?  The lesson here is that life sucks.  Expect it.  Deal with it.  Leaving (because she wasn’t ‘happy’) did not make her happy, because – guess what? – life still sucks!!  Her troubles did not leave her because she left her husband.  The only things that changed were that they no longer shared their struggles and that she could no longer blame him for her struggles. To quote Thomas à Kempis, “whithersoever thou comest, thou bearest thyself with thee, and shalt ever find thyself,” or, in the vernacular, “wherever you go, there you are.”  The way to be happy is not to have the perfect plan to avoid suffering.  That leads to disappointment.  The way to be happy is to expect both joy and suffering and embrace them together. 

[NOTE: I don’t know what the mom in our story was seeking and I’m sure that she wouldn’t be happy with Hollywood’s portrayal of her, so I’m only reacting to that portrayal and its thinly developed character.  Perhaps a better development of the mother’s character would have left me less jarred and better able to enjoy the rest of the movie.  Or perhaps not.]

After stewing on that all night, today I read Heather Mac Donald’s “Too Poor to Marry?” and it has me thinking.  She references a NYT article that tries to explain illegitimacy rates by explaining that many people just can’t afford to get married.  Not that they can’t afford a fancy wedding, but that women can’t afford to take care of a husband in addition to their illegitimate children. “Money helps explain why well-educated Americans still marry at high rates: they can offer each other more financial support, and hire others to do chores that prompt conflict.”  

What?

Sharing chores, sharing a dwelling, and sharing child-rearing responsibilities are money saving features of marriage.  And, as Heather MacDonald says:

“The notion that being a married parent requires more financial resources than being a single one is wrong not just as a matter of economic arithmetic but, more importantly, in terms of what married biological parents bring to their child — not money, but a 24/7 partnership in the extraordinarily difficult task of child-rearing. Household wealth is the least important reason to form a two-parent family; the idea that raising children as a single mother is on average in any sense easier than doing so as a couple, even in the stormiest of marital relationships, is absurd, and ignores the enormous strains of being both the sole bread-winner (or even welfare-collector) and the sole source of authority for your child. A second parent in the home provides back-up support in discipline when the other is at the breaking point, and a doubling of the emotional, intellectual, and moral resources that a child can draw on. You don’t need to be wealthy to offer that complementarity; poor married parents have raised stable, successful children for millennia.”

This leads me to Walter Williams’ four steps to avoid poverty:

1.Graduate from high school.

2.Get a job.  Any job.  Keep working.

3.Get married before you have children.  Stay married.

4.Stay out of jail.

My personal conclusion:  Grow up.  “The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.” ― Peter De Vries.  I don’t care to argue the chicken and egg argument whether people don’t get married because they are emotionally immature or they don’t have to grow up because they can avoid marriage.  Marriage and assuming adult responsibilities are both Good Things for a myriad of reasons, including happiness.  Both are individual choices which can be encouraged but not mandated.  So, when you see someone being irresponsible in a movie or book, point it out.  Fight against the downward spiral of our culture, not by boycotting or trying to ban irresponsible images but by spotlighting them.  Perhaps you’ll make someone else think twice before doing something stupid.